TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M.—Richard Branson reached the edge of space on a flight aimed at spurring a new, multibillion-dollar space-tourism industry.
The British entrepreneur and five crew members crossed the threshold on a test flight of the spacecraft developed by Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., that climbed more than 50 miles above the Earth’s surface.
The spacecraft VSS Unity separated from the launch plane VMS Eve, which took off after a 100-minute weather delay at the launch facility in New Mexico.
The flight is part of a broader push from companies and investors to develop viable businesses based on human space flight, long dominated by government space agencies with scientific and policy missions. There have been instances of private space-tourist trips in the past, such as the investor Dennis Tito’s 2001 visit to the International Space Station, but building a private industry around such travel has proved elusive for commercial enterprises so far.
A number of entrepreneurs aim to change that. Amazon.com Inc.’s founder, Jeff Bezos, has been investing in his space company, Blue Origin LLC, which plans to take him and three others to space on a company rocket later this month. Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp., or SpaceX, plans to fly the chief executive of a payments company to space this year.
